A Look Behind the Making of "Luna Lovers," Las Cafeteras' New Video!

Las Cafeteras, a seven-piece son jarocho inspired ensemble from East Los Angeles, are beaming after the release of their latest music video "Luna Lovers." Our sister blog over at the LA Weekly had the honors of exclusively premiering the social media exploding effort last Thursday. The song is the second single off the band's It's Time debut. Directed by John Cantú, "Luna Lovers" goes into general release on Vevo today. As eyes fixate on the dreamy imagery of the video, we take a behind the scenes look with Cantú and jaranero Hector Flores on how it all came together!

The filmmaker and the folk-fusionists met each other out where the group built up its fan base early on. "I had known Las Cafeteras through a lot of community events," says Cantú, whose previous credits includes Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts are Transforming a Community, a documentary film about Tía Chucha's Centro Cultural, the legendary Northeastern San Fernando Valley space founded by author Luis Rodriguez. It was also a place where the filmmaker saw the group do its thing.

"I always respected their ability to get a crowd going infusing their indigenous jarocho music while contextualizing it in modern Los Angeles."

As the band pondered a follow-up to their wildly popular "La Bamba Rebelde" video and song, Cantú had an idea. "When John first came at us, it was larger than life," says Flores. "He was trying to capture a magical essence and energy that comes from the moon."

Definitely not shy from the politics of the day, Las Cafeteras previously dedicated "Luna Lovers" to an enforcement separated immigrant family in Arizona. They had wondered if the quintessential and elemental love song could be made into a explicitly political statement before signing on to Cantú's vision.

"The filmmaker that really inspired me was George Méliès," Cantú says in conceptualizing what he wanted to do. "He was the first special effects god of cinema. He had a background as a magician." The French filmmaker's A Trip to the Moon was his most famous work. Cantú, who had never taken on a music video of this size before, was sitting in a LA bar pondering what to pitch the band when the film screened. "Oh wait, this would be perfect!" he thought to himself. "I knew then I wanted to do George Méliès by way of Boyle Heights."